June 3-4, 2008. First round of ACTA negotiations in Geneva, at the U.S. Mission in Geneva. The main focus of the discussion was border measures. According to USTR, participants included Australia, Canada, the European Union (represented by the European Commission and Member States, including the EU Presidency (Slovenia)), Japan, Jordan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Jordan and UAE would later drop out as official parties to the negotiation.

June 9, 2008. Canada "non-paper" on ACTA Institutional Issues. Proposes creation of the ACTA Oversight Council, and the establishment of an ACTA Secretariat.

July 7, 2008. International Chamber of Commerce, "Business and the Global Economy: ICC statement on behalf of world business to the Heads of State and Government attending the Hokkaido Toyako G8 Summit, 7-9 July 2008."

July 29-31, 2008. Second round of ACTA negotiations held in Washington, DC. Participating countries are Australia, Canada, the EC, European Union Presidency (France), Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Switzerland, Singapore, and the U.S.

August 2, 2008 USTR Fact Sheet on ACTA

September 22, 2008 IIPA issues statement on the negotiations for an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Oct 3, 2008 U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter, write to USTR expressing concern about the current direction of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations.

October 8-9, 2008. Third round of negotiations held in Tokyo, Japan. Participating countries are Australia, EU, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, the U.S., Japan, and Canada.

December 15-18, 2008. Fourth round of negotiations held in Paris, France. Participating countries are Australia, Canada, the EC, the EU Presidency (France), Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the U.S. The draft text for the Institutional Arrangements chapter, is the lead issue for discussion on day one. Parties continue negotiation on criminal enforcement (first raised in Tokyo in October). Day two includes further discussion on criminal enforcement in the morning and institutional cooperation and enforcement practices in the afternoon.

2009

January 31, 2009. KEI submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to USTR for copies of seven documents containing much of the negotiating text of the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

February 10, 2009. USTR's Stan McCoy send an email to Elizabeth Baltzan, David Apol, Rachel Bae and Kira Alvarez, with the subject "Transparency Soup." In this memo, Stan McCoy anticipated that the Obama Administration might seek to expand the transparency of the ACTA negotiation. McCoy set out a seven point strategy for dealing with the demands for transparency, which ACTA negotiator subsequently follow.

18 February 2009, 16 civil society groups sent a letter to Director-General Dr. Chan on the matter of the Dutch seizures of generic medicines in-transit to developing countries. (For more context: NGOs question WHO silence on goods intransit.

March 5, 2009. Financial Times reports that Dutch authorities seized consignments of Indian-made medicines shipped via Schipol airport for distribution to clinics in Nigeria. EU officials claimed the drugs were counterfeits and -violated patent rules, but UNITAID, the Geneva-based agency which paid for the medicines, demanded their release and said the EU claims were “misleading”. The drugs were addressed to the U.S. embassy, for delivery to the Clinton Foundation.

EFPIA recognizes the right of Member States to stop products that they suspect may be counterfeit from entering the supply chain. On occasions this will require the temporary detention of some products for the purposes of verification and testing. Where the product is not counterfeit and it is ascertained that no intellectual property rights apply at either country of origin or destination, the customs authorities should allow the product to be released, irrespective of the intellectual property status of the product in the EU.

March 19, 2009. USTR promosed a review of its policies regarding transparency. The initiative was initially to be lead by Daniel Sepulveda, a poltiical appointee to the agency. Postscript: After Sepulveda left the agency, the transparency review went nowhere, and USTR asked selected Washington, DC insiders to sign non-disclosure agreements to be briefed on ACTA details.

April 6, 2009 USTR Fact Sheet on ACTA

June 18, 2009. TACD Resolution on enforcement of copyright, trademarks, patents and other intellectual property rights

July 30, 2009, USTR rejected a KEI request for documents relating to a Morocco negotiating session for ACTA. Specifically, USTR denied release of 4 new proposals for text that were circulated in July to “all countries” in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations. The request was limited to documents that were prepared in the past 90 days for purpose of discussion at the July 2009 ACTA negotiating meeting held in Morocco. USTR located 4 such documents, but denied the FOIA request "in the interest of national defense."

August 11 to September 30, 2009. USTR provided 42 Washington, DC insiders access to the U.S. proposals for the ACTA Internet Chapter, on the condition they sign a non-disclosure agreement.

September 11, 2009, KEI asked for the names of persons to whom the USTR has been given access to the U.S. government position on the Internet provisions for ACTA.

September 22, 2009 Eight entertainment and copyright trade associations send letter to President Obama regarding the importance of ACTA.

October 9, 2009. USTR provides KEI with the names of 42 persons who received copies of the US proposal for the Internet Chapter of ACTA, under a non-disclosure agreement. The reports of the NDA results in extensive news coverage of the White House use of NDA and selective access to the ACTA text.

October 14, KEI FOIA request for documents relating to the USTR its review of transparency policies.

April 15, 2010. Seven Greens/EFA MEPs asks WIPO and WTO about transparency, enforcement and norm-setting in relation to ACTA and asks for impact assessments of such aspects. They also "request clarification regarding the relationship between ACTA Institution and WIPO in scenarios where the ACTA Secretariat operates under the WTO, the WIPO, or as an independent body."

April 20, 2010. Daniel Cohn-Bendit asked Barroso in a Plenary debate to publish all ACTA texts.

April 21, 2010. Public release of April 16, 2010 a "Public Predecisional/Deliberative Draft of the ACTA text," that does not identify participants’ positions in respect of square bracketed options.

May 26, 2010. Seven Greens/EFA MEPs wrote a follow up letter to WTO president Pascal Lamy asking for comments on the "potential implications of new global norms that may emerge from ACTA", whether "ACTA parties approached, consulted or shared further information about the negotiations with the WTO" and "To what extent would a decision in the dispute supersede ACTA provisions that exceed those in the TRIPS Agreement or the GATT or conflict with the decision?"

May 31, 2010. MEP Ska Keller asked a priority question to the Commission about provisions in ACTA "that clearly breach commitments under the Doha Declaration".

June 8, 2010. China, India and other developing countries ask WTO TRIPS Council to discuss impact of ACTA on global trade.

June 23, 2010. The Washington ACTA Communique, reflecting the views of academics, practitioners and public interest organizations, and members of the European Parliament.

June 25, 2010. Intellectual Property Owners Association writes to USTR. According to IPO

As currently drafted, given the expansive use of the broadly-defined term "intellectual property," ACTA goes far beyond addressing the subject matter of counterfeiting. This broad definition encompasses issues that are most appropriately handled as civil infringement causes of action in most jurisdictions around the world, and especially so in the case of the United States. . . . We believe ACTA potentially changes United States Law by transforming what are commonly occurring non-counterfeit-types of civil action infringements into an activity that is to be punished under federal criminal law. . . . ACTA is unwittingly broadening the scope of the seizure power of Customs and Border Patrol forces to encompass civil action trademark infringement and raising the specter of potential abuse in many countries around the globe. The determination of whether marks are similar and whether there is a likelihood of confusion should not be conducted hastily and in an ex parte manner by a border official, but should instead be based upon the appropriate legal analysis (possibly resulting from extensive pre-trial preparation and discovery where allowed).

June 28 - July 1 2008. The 9th round of negotiations on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was held in Lucerne, Switzerland from 28 June to 1 July 2010, hosted by Switzerland. According to the joint statement, participants in the negotiations included Australia, Canada, the European Union, represented by the European Commission, the EU Presidency (Spain, then Belgium on July 1) and EU Member States, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States of America. Three days before the start of the negotiations, the Swiss annouced a meeting for civil society, on the same day as the KEI/IQSensato Geneva workshop on ACTA.

July 1, 2010. A new consolidated draft text is prepared and subsequently leaked. The brackets indicate Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the U.S. and Mexico try to limit the Civil Enforcement Chapter to copyrights and related rights and trademarks. Japan, Switeraland and the EU want the Civil Enforcement Chapter to cover all intellectual property rights in the TRIPS.

July 7, 2010. Greens/EFA issue an urgent appeal for transparency in the negotiations on ACTA.

July 15, 2010. Letter from the Article 29 Working Party addressed to Commissioner, Mr. Karel de Gucht, regarding the data protection and privacy implications of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

September 22, 2010. MEP Ska Keller writes on behalf of the Greens/EFA Bureau to Mr. Yoshihiro Takeda of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, asking that ACTA negotiators meet with the public meeting the week of September 27.

September 23, 2010. Mr. Yoshihiro Takeda of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs answers MEP Ska Keller that The Government of Japan regrets it cannot arrange a meeting for civil society to meet with negotiators during the week of September 27. KEI and several others receive a similar communication.

September 27, 2010. MEPs received an answer to written question E-4292/10

October 4, 2010. In response to the joint statement by ACTA parties, MEP Ska Keller tabled a question to the Commission and a priority question to the Council.

October 6, 2010. Joint release of October 2, 2010 version of the "near final" consolidated ACTA text.

October 8, 2010. Senator Wyden writes the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, asking that it undertake and provide to Congress "a written, independent determination of whether the commitments put forward in the agreement diverge from our domestic laws or would impeded legislative efforts that are currently underway. The letter asks the division to "pay particular attention to the provisions relating to injunctions, damages, and intermediary liability."

October 25, 2010. Françoise Castex, a French Socialist MEP, submits a priority question about ACTA to the European Commission, asking about assertions by the USTR that ACTA would not require changes in U.S. patent laws.

October 26, 2010. Michèle Rivasi, a Member of the European Parliament, representing South East France for The Greens, has asked the European Commission: "Given the possible impacts of the inclusion of patents the agreement on access to medicines and on innovation, would the Commission consider accepting the exclusion of patents from the agreement as proposed by a number of ACTA negotiating parties?"

Tuesday 28 February, 11.30h - ACTA press conference by rapporteur David Martin (S&D, UK) and shadow rapporteur Christofer Fjellner (EPP, SE). "Mr Martin will state his position on ACTA and comment on the European Commission's decision to refer it to the European Court of Justice for a ruling on its compatibility with fundamental rights". Venue: Anna Politkovskaya press conference room, 00A050, Paul-Henri Spaak building

29 February, 17.00h - First International Trade Committee debate on ACTA, "This is the committee that will make a formal recommendation to Parliament as a whole on whether to approve ACTA. Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht will take part",Venue: room PHS 3C050, Paul-Henri Spaak building.